Reply
Sat 1 Jul, 2006 06:02 pm
Most of you are out of college. But wouldn't you agree that we have all committed stupid mistakes through our freshman years. Worse still, we could have easily avoided them - we knew we were on the wrong (may be, you just didn't know).
I think it would be a great idea to share our nightmare experiences. If there are any college-bound teens hanging around in here it would be some help to them.
Hmm, to start it all off, here is a brief list of my blunders:
1. Not studying regularly: I was a straight A student at school but upon entering college, I got so addicted to the Internet and hanging out that eventually I ended doing all-nighters before exams. It was really awful. My grades were affected and I can see how it could all have been avoided if I had exercised some more will power.
2. Not befriending seniors: I am a dab hand at making friends. I made so many out there. I really felt proud and did not think that it was any need befriending any senior as I had loads of friends in my class. I did not realize that these friends were not good enough to guide me through the college rules and not just experienced enough to acquaint me of the tricks and tactics that work at this college.
3. I wasn't much of a speaker at class. This was probably because I wasn't doing my self-study at home but it did affect my rapport with the teachers who had earlier, during the admission procedure, been impressed with my school performance. When I look back at my active participation in debates during debates and class discussions at school, I feel sucked, real sucked.
One thing that comes to mind: Take advantage of writing workshops! Many colleges and universities have programs where students who have proven themselves to be good writers volunteer their time to help those who have less writing experience. Never waste an opportunity to improve your writing, in matters of structure as well as matters of grammar. As someone who teaches college students, I can tell you that a questionable thesis that is well-written and well-argued will usually earn you a better mark than a sound thesis that is badly-argued and badly-written.
On a related note: PROOFREAD YOUR PAPERS! For one thing, typos give the impression that you don't care about the assigment. For another, if by the end of college you are still not using correct subject-verb agreement or are still writing in run-on sentences and fragments, it will make you look very bad to employers. I'm always taken aback when I receive papers loaded with grammatical errors from students who speak perfect English. I'm not sure why things get lost between speaking and writing, but if you can speak coherently then you can write coherently. I always tell my students that one of the most effective ways to proofread is to read the paper aloud, exactly as you've written it: pause where there's a comma or period, and don't pause if there isn't one. Even if you don't know the exact rules of grammar, you can often hear when something is wrong. If you find yourself wanting to make a pause when you speak it, it probably means you should have a comma or period there. If you find that you don't want to pause even though you've written in a comma or period, it probably means you've written a sentence fragment.
Good advice, Shapeless. Thanks
Last year I attended my 45th college reunion. The college always has a formal questionnaire geared to academic accomplisments and temporal glories.
Our informal questionnaire asked, "What do you regret about your college years?"
About a third of the class said they wished they had focused more on academic work. Another third wished they had taken advantage of the many activities on and off campus. The rest admitted to some regrets, but pointed out that 45-50 years ago we were young and maturing without the benefits of our present perspective.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace